“You don’t waste much time when you travel in your airplanes,” said Robins. “I cannot imagine getting to Diamond Lake in less than two hours. Every time I have gone up there it has taken several days. I guess that you can find your way home from here. I will start back. Good luck.”
“Thanks for the buggy ride,” said Breene, and Robins left them standing on the station platform.
A couple of hours’ wait for the train and then they were en route to Eugene. The train trip seemed endless, as they were both eager to get back to their quarters so that they could change their clothing.
“You had us worried for a while,” said Captain Smith as he greeted Bill at Eugene. “We did not know whether you had made a safe landing or had cracked up.”
“I did both,” replied Bill. “I made a safe landing, for neither one of us were even scratched, and I cracked up a perfectly good ship so that it will never be flown again. I set it down in the only open space that I could see within miles. That place wasn’t any too open. The second growth timber was eight or ten feet high.”
“Batten flew down there and saw the plane and noted the character of the country in which you had landed,” said Smith. “He also said that had you not selected the spot which you did, your plane would probably be hanging to the tree tops a couple of hundred feet from the ground. We were all much pleased when Mollie, the lookout, ’phoned in that you were O. K. I have already sent down for another plane for you. Batten and Goldy are taking some game to San Francisco. They got a late start but hope to get in tonight. They will bring your plane back with them tomorrow.”
“Just think of it,” said Bill. “You casually remark that Batten and Goldy are going to fly from here to San Francisco today and come back tomorrow. On that trip they will cover a distance of about nine hundred or a thousand miles. Breene and I have been five days covering a little less than four hundred miles. Give me the airplane every time.”
CHAPTER XVIII—THE WEATHER CHANGES
During the next few weeks the patrols became monotonously routine. The hot, dry weather continued and the fires broke out with a regularity which nonplussed the foresters and the aviators. New fires were picked up in spite of the smoke pall, but it was mighty hard work. The aviators were having their fill of flying over the forests, but with each patrol they became more experienced and could locate the fires with an accuracy that was astonishing. It was a question as to how much longer they could stand the strain, for the constant flying over timberland, where landing fields were conspicuous by their absence, showed its effect on the smooth flying of the pilots. The Flight Surgeon had already sent several of them into the woods on vacation to rest, something that they would not do while at the base.
The critical fire situation which existed in the woods was shown by one patrol on which Kiel carried Forester Oglesby over a particularly bad area. They discovered four new fires all within six miles of a lookout station. One covered four hundred acres and another over two hundred acres, and yet the lookout could not see them on account of the smoke pall. When Kiel thought that he had about half completed the patrol, he handed Oglesby a note asking which direction he wished to go to finish the patrol. Oglesby then returned the paper to Kiel. On it he had written, “Take me home. I have counted thirty-one fires and have seen all that I can stand for one day.” Rain was needed, and needed badly to save the woods.